Blogs

Web Shows

Resources

Biden: "I haven't given up" on assault weapons ban

Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a conference on gun violence at Western Connecticut State University on February 21, 2013 in Danbury, Connecticut. The conference, held at the school where Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter Adam Lanza once took classes, featured panel discussions on ways to reduce gun violence, protect children and make communities safer. Before killing himself, Adam Lanza killed his mother and 26 people inside the Sandy Hook School on Dec. 14.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Vice President Joe Biden says he and the Obama administration "havent given up" on an assault weapons ban.

The White House has been urging Congress to pass the ban. But Senate Democrats dropped it Tuesday from the gun control package the Senate will debate next month. They were concerned that opposition to the ban could sink the whole bill.

Biden has been leading the administration's gun control efforts. He tells NPR News he's still pushing for the ban and that the will of the people will eventually prevail.

"I'm still pushing that it pass -- we are still pushing that it pass," Biden told NPR. "The same thing was told to me when the first assault weapons ban in '94 was attached to the Biden crime bill, that it couldn't possibly pass. It was declared dead several times.

"I believe that the vast majority of the American people agree with us, the vast majority of gun owners agree with us, that military-style assault weapons are -- these are weapons of war; they don't belong in the street.

"And [in] the recent decision declaring the right of someone to own a weapon in their home for self-protection, Justice [Antonin] Scalia acknowledged that you can constitutionally ban certain types of weapons. And so I haven't given up on this."

The ban will still get a separate vote this year as an amendment, but it stands little chance of passing.